What’s Going On Right Now

There’s a lot going on in the world right now, especially in my little section of it. I’ve got my Master’s program in Human-Computer Interaction Design, a potential submission to Microsoft’s Imagine Cup, a lot of awesome people to interact with, and also I just recently gotten an internship as part of the Web Team at Game Zombie, an internet site which helps to garner interest in gaming by showcasing the latest and greatest videos and material from the gaming world. They are actually pretty well known, and I’m excited to get to work with them. Here’s their latest accomplishment, which is about their ongoing series called Button Mashers. Looks quite cool – you should probably check it out.

Also, here’s a sample of the web videos they create, with this one featuring the game Dead Space:

RE5 Demo Review

As many know, I love to play video games, and hopefully I’ll end up helping to make them in the future, but a demo came out recently of one of my favorite series, Resident Evil. I just got to play the new demo, and I have some things to say from both the player’s standpoint and the interaction designer’s standpoint. Before I begin, here’s a snapshot of the gameplay, taken from my iPhone:



















The Player’s Standpoint

From a player’s standpoint, the demo was pretty good. Aside from new graphics, I feel it is still the same as RE4. The only difference is that there is another player who can help you, but you’re plopped into the middle of two infested areas with infinite zombies, with no upgraded weapons. It was both fun and frustrating, as the default button configuration was not anything like the other RE games. Many of the people who ended up playing ended up either calling for the other player, or not knowing how to reload or switch to other guns (which all of these are all important and necessary things for the player to do!). It also felt exactly like RE4, with the exact voices and feel as RE4, which was OK, but there’s some promise for improvement. I felt utterly frustrated after playing this game, as there was so much left hidden that I could not get to or understand, especially since I was playing splitscreen. This will not make for non-online gaming in this game difficult.

The Interaction Designer’s Standpoint

There’s a lot about this demo which made me like and dislike the demo from this standpoint. I did like some of the ways which the UI helps to show a lot of information. Things like life, and what the other player has are really important to show at all times. I also did like how the interface changed when the other player was in trouble, but the introductions of annoying sounds (but the good use of voice overs) made it almost impossible to not know when the other player is in need of your help. The button combination was pretty poor, as it didn’t allow me to be able to get into the game immediately. I had to constantly keep asking about buttons and how to move my fingers, rather than having fun. The traditional RE style of play would have suited much better, and not having to use two sticks to move would be much better. Learn from the GameCube and the PS2 control scheme! Also, there were quick menus and such unavailable without knowing how to get to them. Some tips on that would have been really helpful. The same cues for when an interactable are still around (glowing light), but they force you to use the X button (which is on the right, not where one’s thumb actually rests), instead of the A button. It just doesn’t gel. Overall, there was a good use of the cues which worked from RE4, but these cues were hampered by the introduction of more information and the reduced screen size (not to mention the poor control scheme). Hopefully, this will be made better for the final release.

Some Firsts

I also had the experience of doing some things for the first time in my life. I got to go to a Slow Food potluck last weekend, and there was some great food there (couscous – so nice they named it twice!). Even though I was pretty satisfied, I ended up going grocery shopping and then having another awesome experience at a White Castle. I just loved the people there, along with how the food is presented, and how it fits in one’s hand. Combine the good taste of the food, and it’s one great experience to remember. A picture of the packaging is below to show you what I mean.



















Save the TGA

As many people know about me, I love to play in the arcade as often as I can. It’s not only fun, but it’s also a great way to meet people and get some exercise done as well.

I have originally started to venture into arcades back in my freshman year at RPI, where we had a DDR 4th mix, which was fun to start playing on. From then on, I got hooked onto going to these places because of the fun experiences they offer me, and I still go to them now out here in Indiana.

One of the best places that I have ever been to for an arcade is a place called TGA, which stands for Tokyo Game Action. You can find their website by clicking here. You could do pretty much anything you want there – play any type of imported music game, arcade game, or play bowling and eat. It was always a 3 hour trip to get there from Troy, NY, but it was always worth the effort to go, as I have never had a bad experience there.

I just found out that this awesome place has just been hit with a series of floods, and now they will have to shut down the place for good. That’s not only unfair to me as a player, but more importantly, for the ownership of the place, as they were the nicest bunch of people ever. They were always excited whenever we came to visit them, and they even helped us to find food arrangements in the area of Winchendon, MA. They were never pushy, either, and always kept all of their machines in the best condition.

I would like to know from the aether of cyberspace what you feel about arcades, too, but most importantly, about when bad things happen to good people. Hopefully this post will help to start generating some feelings about this place, and maybe they can reopen. I pray for the place’s return and continued operation as well, as I loved that place.

Aesthetic Experiences All Around

Our professor had an aesthetic experience last week, which we informed about. It wasn’t a positive experience, but it was still aesthetic, and we heard an expression of the experience. His computer decided to die, with the lecture notes on it. Then he went through many different people and ways to try to retrieve the data, only to find the computer able to magically turn on perfectly fine at a much later time. Quite an exasperating expression!

On Csikszentmihalyi & Robinson

These two ethnographers are taking a look at an empirical way to try to figure out what truely is an aesthetic experience. They decided to start by asking: who are good witnesses? what are the best expressions?

They found these answers in museum curators, as they were expert and professional viewers of art. These people also know what makes art special and could have potentially the best insight into what an aesthetic experience might entail. They decided to ask each of these curators to describe a recent aesthetic experience they had, which is different from asking them to define what an aesthetic experience is. This allowed the study to not have any presupposed meaning of this term, or allow the curators to insert any philosophical or normalizing comments into the work. In other words, this is a grounded theory approach, and it allowed the participants to speak for themselves.

This approach is also handy, as it allows one build up a theory without any of the negative aspects mentioned above. It is also handy when one doesn’t know the actual theory behind what one is trying to study, which allows one to get into the research mode and begin to get a grasp on things before entering the fieldwork. So here is what they found:

There are four dimensions to an aesthetic experience:
perceptual, emotional, intellectual, communicative

The perceptual dimension shows that an aesthetic experience contains elements related to the information we gain from our senses. For example, from art, information in this dimension would contain information about the physical features, the notion of beauty, craftsmanship, composition, and awareness of production.

The emotional dimension contains aspects related to how we feel from the art, how the artist felt, negative and positive emotions (sometimes mixing), and the seductiveness of the art itself.

The intellectual dimesnion contains aspects related to our thinking, closure/openness we are to the art, the non-inferred history of the art (actually knowing how the art was made), the dynamic nature of our mind as we interpret art, the codebreaking process some try to complete when examining the art, and the tagging (or labelling) art in a certain category.

The communicative dimension involves the integration of the other dimensions and dialogue (communicating an expression of our experience to others), time, the “switching realities” some curators went through, the process of self-definition, and the creation of inferences.

An interesting debate point came up: how can we know if something is intellectual or fitting in the aesthetic realm? An answer we received was due to the fact that without the “correct intellectual apparatus”, one can really never know. This was a topic in the movie The Gods Must Be Crazy, which helps to show that all four of these dimensions are interlocked and cannot truly be disparate. Here is a clip from this movie, from YouTube:

These dimensions can be used as a means to help understand how we as a culture talk about expressions. But here is an interesting question that I didn’t get to raise: would the same dimension have been found if they analyzed different media? Would there be a different set of labels to these dimensions? I would be curious to see if they asked professional movie critics or video game players these questions and see what results.

From the Mouths of McCarthy and Wright

We also began to start delving into the book Technology as Experience, starting from chapter 3. We learn about a notion called the felt life, which helps to strike at another way of expressing the expressions we have. This concept is different from the mental models of what reality is, which is how we think of reality, but different from the experience.

There are also a couple of great quotes to look at when thinking about this section: on pp54, the authors talk about how experience is personal, it shapes our actions, and it cannot be boiled down. Experience is a complicated amalgamation of (my word here) stuff!

Another good quote in on pp56. This regards intoning, a central concept: intoning is a process in which we make acts our own, with our own interpretations. This helps us to form our own identity, and our own take on events. For example, we can see this in a person’s choice of fashion and the consequences of how we perceive that person and how that person perceives his/her self. This concept made me think of a similar word: imbue. It seems like we imbue our own meanings and interpretations to the events that transpire during one’s experience. Any other thoughts on this?

And Here’s How it All Fits into HCI

Well, maybe this isn’t a complete answer, but it’s a start. We as professionals look at how experience shapes people. We then turn this into important insights we can use in building our designs to help people overcome the problems they run into every day. Remember, this is just a start, but there’s also some other people who can help elaborate:

The concept of the computer as theatre from Laurel. The computer is a type of theatre which allows us to extend our minds and become engaged. Doesn’t this seem similar to the doing and undergoing we are getting used to hearing?

There’s also some insight from Murray: computers utilize immersion, agency, transformation. Again, more of the concept of doing and undergoing, just a different name on it.

Also, we could take a look at how these concepts affect actual people. Turkle has already begun to look at this, represented in the description of different groups of people in the book (e.g. hackers). It’s all fun and games, and the computer is their agent.

The Thought Experiment

So we were then given a thought experiment to end the class – how can we apply the conepts of immersion, agency, and transformation in different media? One example was of the video game. For me, I thought of agency as the avatar(s) one uses when in control of the game (and, to be literal, the controller functions as an agent, and potentially the hardware used to have the an experience on). I also thought of the immersion as totally being into the game as a person, and not realizing hours have gone by. This is true for me in Rock Band and, right now, Final Fantasy XII. In terms of transformation, I feel that a video game should help to transform one’s own outlook through the characters. In addition, one could have a physical transformation as well. Ergocentric games, like DDR have been known to help people reduce much of their weight problems (I lost 70 pounds playing it, and I also like exercise now, too).

A more tough example, which I will muse on, is the case of the operating system. In terms of agency, the operating system is the agent used to interact with all the hardware in the computer. For some, it is also the agent used to get to all the programs stored on one’s computer. In terms of immersion, one usually knows when he/she is dealing with an OS to find whatever is desired. For those who truly love the terminal, this is the ultimate sense of immersion, as the operator is in direct contact and immersed with the most basic of OS operations. For the transformation aspect, an OS could help us to be more productive. Without it, we pretty much don’t have a usable computer. We also don’t have a way to run programs, as well. Also, we can also learn a little bit about ourselves, as if we are Mac or Windows people, and how to deal with either type of people. So what are you thinking?

An Idea for a Game

So one of the first things I’ll talk about here is a pitch-like explanation idea of mine I have been thinking about for a game class I am taking in my graduate career, here at IU. It’s going to be short and sweet.

So the protagonists of this game are twins in their late twenties. One is male and the other is female, and they are of Native American descent. They live normally in a urbanized area of Texas, but suddenly they receive notice they have inherited the deed to an old building in a secluded, very rustic town far away from civilization. Once the protagonists get there, they find the town shrouded in perpetual clouds and darkness. They start to investigate the building and the surrounding areas, and that’s where the game starts.

Once the twins enter the building they have inherited, which turns out to be an old physical fitness center which was the scene of a famous series of murders (but the twins don’t know this). Strange things start happening, as the building starts to emit strange sounds and they think they see ghosts (which, by chance, happen to attack anything which threatens their death site). But the twins have luck on their side, as when they are near each other and threatened, their ancestral powers are awakened so they can defend themselves. The twins continue to investigate the building until they get to the bottom of what’s going on and why everything is acting sooooo strange……

I’m thinking this might be a flash or a 3d game. It’ll be really cool to get it to be 2 players, but may need to act like RE0 if there isn’t time or resources to test for two players. It might be an action game, or it could act like an older RPG menu-based adventure. This is something which would be determined, if this idea is even accepted during class tomorrow.

So what do you think?